Farrer is a suburb in the Canberra

Canberra

Canberra is the capital city of Australia. With a population of over 345,000, it is Australia's largest inland city and the eighth-largest city overall. The city is located at the northern end of the Australian Capital Territory , south-west of Sydney, and north-east of Melbourne...

, Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

 district of Woden. The postcode is 2607.

Name origin

Named for William James Farrer (1845–1906), a wheat-breeding pioneer, many of whose experiments were conducted at Lambrigg

Lambrigg (house)

Lambrigg is an historical property close to Tharwa in the Australian Capital Territory which is listed by the ACT Heritage Council as a place of historical significance. It was the residence of William James Farrer who made a major contribution to the wheat industry by developing a strain of wheat...

 near Tharwa

Tharwa, Australian Capital Territory

Tharwa is a small village within the Australian Capital Territory, south of Canberra, the capital city of Australia. At the 2006 census, Tharwa had a population of 109....

.

Location

It is next to the suburbs of Torrens, Mawson, Isaacs and the Canberra Nature Park

Canberra Nature Park

The Canberra Nature Park is actually 30 separate protected areas in Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, ranging from bushland hills to lowland native grassland...

 of Farrer Ridge. It is bordered by Beasley Street, Athllon Drive and Yamba Drive. Located in the suburb is Farrer Primary School and neighbourhood oval, a Croatian Catholic parish centre, the Serbian Orthodox Church of St Sava, a small shopping centre, the Long Gully scout hall and the Goodwin Village for elderly citizens.

General information

Farrer is a relatively big suburb for Canberra, with over 3,000 residents. It was named on 12 May 1966, after William James Farrer, who had lived in the area late in the 19th century, making a significant contribution to wheat-breeding in New South Wales by producing climate species, thus extending the wheat-belt and enabling the breeding of resistant wheat. The suburb's streets are named after agriculturalists as well, with the exception of Lambrigg Street, which was the name of Farrer's property in Tharwa.

The suburb's size resulted in possession of its own oval, located next to the primary school, a scout hall for the local group named Long Gully, and three playgrounds at various locations. Pearce

Pearce

Pearce may refer to:In places:*Pearce, Australian Capital TerritoryPeople with the surname Pearce:*Pearce *Aiden Pearce, guitarist and vocalist for willy bum bum-See also:...

's Melrose High School and Wanniassa's Erindale College are only 2.4 and 2.7 kilometres away respectively. While the small convenience store is often frequented by locals, Farrer is in proximity to "cosmopolitan" Southlands Shopping Centre at Mawson and Woden Plaza in Phillip, only 4.2 km away. The Canberra hospital in Garran is nearer still, at 3.8 km.

The Farrer Ridge Nature Reserve, part of the Canberra Nature Park and the southern limit of the suburb, provides for walking, mountain bike riding and horse riding.

Geology

Deakin Volcanics green-grey and purple rhyodacite

Rhyodacite

Rhyodacite is an extrusive volcanic rock intermediate in composition between dacite and rhyolite. It is the extrusive equivalent of granodiorite. Phenocrysts of sodium rich plagioclase, sanidine, quartz, and biotite or hornblende are typically set in an aphanitic to glassy light to intermediate...

 underlies the whole suburb. Deakin Volcanics cream rhyolite

Rhyolite

This page is about a volcanic rock. For the ghost town see Rhyolite, Nevada, and for the satellite system, see Rhyolite/Aquacade.Rhyolite is an igneous, volcanic rock, of felsic composition . It may have any texture from glassy to aphanitic to porphyritic...

 occurs on the top of Farrer Ridge.
Quaternary

Quaternary

The Quaternary Period is the most recent of the three periods of the Cenozoic Era in the geologic time scale of the ICS. It follows the Neogene Period, spanning 2.588 ± 0.005 million years ago to the present...

 alluvium

Alluvium

Alluvium is loose, unconsolidated soil or sediments, eroded, deposited, and reshaped by water in some form in a non-marine setting. Alluvium is typically made up of a variety of materials, including fine particles of silt and clay and larger particles of sand and gravel...

can be found in the valley bottom.